Love and Revolution is the title of my poetry collection from Luath Press, Edinburgh, published 4th September 2006. The Introduction and a taster of three of the shorter poems are given below. Details of forthcoming performances (sometimes offputtingly and wrongly known as "readings") are on my itinerary. I've pasted in a representative sampling below - not necessarily the best, but ones that stand alone well.

You can order it direct from Luath Press, from Scotland's radical bookshop WordPower, or from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com (£7.99/$14.95 r.r.p., 96 pp., ISBN 1-905222-58-0).

The work was collected over the previous twenty years. Much of it was written while I was engaged in the struggles documented in Soil and Soul. While that book told stories, offered analysis and explored history, this one shares the inner spirituality that integrates working for transformation in the world with the eternal search to know the passion of love in all its meanings.

Recent pieces of writing in the collection include two longer poems: The Forge explores identity, belonging and mythology in the political context of Scotland's land reform and the people of the Gigha have requested to hang a copy of it in the island's hotel. And Homage to Young Men was written at the request of the chart-topping folk hip-hop duo, Nizlopi, of JCB Song fame. It was first performed with them in January at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow and, subsequently, to audiences of up to 3,000.

Nizlopi's new mini-album, ExtraOrdinary, was simultaneously released with Love & Revolution on 4th September. The last track comprises the Homage performed as a crazy rant with the boys of the band. This mini-album is available from Recordstore. There's also the text of the Homage and a BBC radio interview about it available online here.

This Homage was, of course, a one-track wonder from the one-track mind of a fake rapper! I just can't take the late nights anymore! But do, please, enjoy at your leisure, as with a good malt whisky - Love and Revolution. And let me add how delighted I am that the cover uses the work of Rhona Mackinnon, a young photo-artist from the Isle of Harris, with a composition from her home village entitled, River at Bun Abhainn-Eadar, Harris.

Reviews of Love & Revolution

"I read the brief introduction to the collection in my little wooden cabin at Cae Mabon and was amazed by the number of powerful ideas the author had fitted into this short piece." - Philip Carr-Gomm, Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids, 2009.

"… a remarkable spiritual articulation of life’s universal journey, from departure, through initiation to return… Offering beauty, passion, harmony, humour, love and revolution, but most of all love." - Alan Hobbett, Good Company, 2007.

“From the quiet solitude of a winter’s night to passionate love, these verses touch on many aspects of life’s journey.” - Scots Magazine, Dec 2006.

“I asked Alastair to get up and rave with us because he is my favourite author. He is a poet, a thinker and a doer. He seems able to link us to our past, to the land and to the spiritual core that is the essence of life and art. We need people who dare to speak these truths more than ever now… He howls his poems like a wild man.” – Luke Concannon, lead singer in Nizlopi

"It addresses what the mythologist Joseph Campbell identified as the tree stages of all great stories (and life itself): departure, initiation - running into troubled waters - and return, when the hero brings back gifts and blessings to the community.... McIntosh delivers harsh social criticism with a poetic voice." - Sam Phipps, The Herald (The Guide, p. 11), 9 September 2006.

"It is easy to see how Alastair has already developed such a wide audience, spanning from Christian and Pagan groups to rock stars and geologists.... To add to these accolades, this reviewer would describe his most recent work as thought-provoking and enigmatic. Unlike many poets, Alastair gets his points across clearly in each of his works - and steers clear of the 'airy-fairy' over-sentimental tendencies of many writers..... moving modern poetry ... intriguing and touching .... Despite the fact that Alastair no longer lives in the Western Isles - he now stays with his wife in the 'Hebridean' quarter of Glasgow, Greater Govan - his poetry very much reflects the Isles." - Maggie Taylor, Stornoway Gazette, 31 August 2006, p. 12.

"There is love, despair, humour, and existential pondering. There is a challenge to the churchmen of Scotland, a eulogy to a lost friend, love notes to Scotland, to the Goddess, the cosmos. There are exhortations and blessings to magicians, musicians, bishops or lovers, to anyone who's trying to 'rise to vocation's calling'. If you've ever felt a little lonely, a little out of step with the world as you try to live out that calling, then these poems are written for you, to let you know that you're not alone." - Deb Curnock, Movement, Issue 125, spring 2007, p. 29.

"[A] marvellous book of poetry... Thank you once again for ... the pleasure your writing has given me and so many others." - Tim Smit, The Eden Project, 23 Feb 2007.

"AMENEM: Thought for the Day rev is new rapper for chart-toppers ... the prof was proof that age was no barrier to communicating with young people." - Paula Murray, Daily Record, 16 Sept 2006

Introduction

I think Joseph Campbell was right when he said that all great stories share a common theme. There is the departure, when the fresh-faced hero sets out on life’s journey; the initiation, when she or he hits troubled rapids; and the return, bringing back gifts and blessings that help to sustain the community through the process of eldership.

Such is the path of any one of us who rises to vocation’s calling. We gradually open out to a life that is greater than our small, egocentric selves. As Campbell concludes: ‘The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world.’

This calls for nothing less than understanding the real nature of magic. It means seeing our activism, whether it is social or ecological, as spiritual articulation.

Guns are too callous, bombs too ruthless, and knives too blunt to cut the darkness of these times. Our activism demands a poetry that holds out for nothing less than poesis - a participation in the beauty of making and re-making reality.

Such calling is to an incarnate politics - to spirituality rendered carnal, being engaged with the flesh and fabric that forms our world. That is why love and revolution must be erotically inseparable. That is how we transcend the nihilism of Mark Twain’s observation that ‘familiarity breeds contempt.’ For this spirituality constantly renews the face of the Earth and of weathered humankind.

To work with such forces in a world that is largely oblivious to them inevitably makes one feel, as Ben Okri puts it, that one is transgressing. In writing Soil and Soul, I was somewhat able to protect myself behind careful wording and impeccable referencing. But that is less easy to achieve with writing poetry. Here, then, is the underlying naked passion unveiled. It is an offering for all who dare to tread life’s elemental ways. Lonely, perhaps, you roam the paths of love, but not alone.

Reviews of Love & Revolution

Introduction

10 Poems - a representative selection from the work

Extinction

Murdo of Assynt

Boating in Maine

The Forge

After Culloden

Rocky Mountain Walk

Lithogenesis of Feminine

Epiphany

Wife